I wrote about each section before reading on. To help us through, Mantel has a five-page list of characters, divided into sections, and family trees for the Tudors and Plantagenets. In that night-time mental stock-takeβor was it the grinding gears of insomnia?
Part of his reputation is based on the fact that he seems to remember everything. In this novel, as in the earlier two, not only is knowledge power for him, but he wants people to think he knows absolutely everything. Or get one of his agents to put pressure on himβ¦. And the fluid, encyclopaedic narrative style, as though we are looking at the world through his eyes, has a knock-on effect for the reader.
As other people, council members or lords with an axe to grind, attempt to assess a situation, we feel vaguely sorry for them. Only Cromwell knows. He remembers what a shock it had been when Henry had been close to death after falling at a tournament in Bring Up the Bodies.
If the king is capable of contemplating such an end for his wife, a queen, nobody is safe. Those powerful men have him in their sightsβ¦. Leaving aside the question of how powerful they are, what is it they want from him that will keep him safe? This is anathema to Henry. Both his marriages have been annulled, so the order in which his daughters were bornβthe ailing Mary and the squealing toddler Elizaβis irrelevant. Neither will ever rule, a line that is official court policy. Nobody is blowing a trumpet for Elizabeth but, amongst the lords like Norfolk who want a return to the Catholic status quo, Mary is the favourite.
Described baldly like this, it might sound as though all Cromwell has to do is a bit of juggling. And over all of it, Henry seems even more volatile and subject to changes of mood than he was before. He often delegates negotiations to his little cohort of proto-civil servants like his trusted nephew Rafe Sadler. This is why his working days are sixteen hours long, and why he might sometimes spend a sleepless night trying to square about a dozen different circles in his head.
